Pageantry

Let me tell you something about elementary school: it's full of sly madness. I know most people picture little kids running around and wreaking havoc, splashing primary-colored paints all over the walls, liberating slimy class pets like frogs and lizards and more or less making the river Styx look like Lake Placid. But it's actually a madhouse in a very different way. It's not just a madhouse but an asylum. In asylums, the harshest, most deranged madnesses are those that are less verbal and more emotional, those that happen internally instead of screamed at the top of lungs or unleashed by overturning desks. Pushing and shoving are nothing compared to sly note passing and stares through slitted eyes. And I'm in the midst of both right now.

A week ago, two Big Events happened. One of the Events was the announcement of the 1992 Martin Van Buren Elementary School Fall Talent Show.

"So, class," said Mrs. Nevins, a pencil of a woman — long, thin body with a perm-topped, eraser-pink face at the tip. "It's not too early to start thinking about the fall talent show."

Cue the Hallelujah Chorus.

"I know many of you participated last year, and I encourage all of you to participate again this year. You have a couple of months to decide on your acts and rehearse them. Then you will have to fill out this form" — she was handing slips of light blue paper to each of us — "and describe what your act will be. It can be anything you want — you can dance or sing or play the piano or do a funny skit. Or you could even lip-synch to a song."

She must have been joking because almost everyone lipsynchs to a song. It takes no talent to do this. I'll never forget the disgusting sight that was Kevin Bartlett dressed in a leather jacket and a Beethoven-like wig while he "strummed" a cardboard guitar and "sang" Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer." Kevin didn't move from his spot. He didn't even really know any of the words besides the chorus, so, minus the music, he was just standing and staring. Everyone was basically listening to the radio for five minutes. But their cheers after he "finished" meant that they loved it. Then there was the "brilliance" that was Cindy Michaels hand-jiving to Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach." Obviously, Cindy's mother, Ms. Lansing, didn't ever stop to listen to the "I got knocked up but I'm going to keep the baby" lyrics, nor the fact that chances were Cindy, who smooched every boy in class, might someday live up to the words. There are countless examples of other lip-synching fiascos that I could mention, but suffice it to say that 99.9 percent of the school is virtually talentless, and there is only that one rare diamond in the rough that shines through the mold.

And I'm a 400-carat stone, baby.

Unfortunately, the announcement of this miraculous annual event coincided with the Other Big Event: Kiran Being Wronged by Two Cold-Hearted Snakes.

Sarah Turner and Melissa Jenkins — elementary school wenches of the worst degree. In the Polaroid of my mind, the three of us sit arranged on the playground swings: Sarah on the left swing, her golden-retriever hair crossed by a purple headband and buoyed at the temples by two elfin ears. Me on the center swing, large brown eyes and mop-top black hair, red sweatsuit sheathing my body, legs crossed as if I'm a hostess. Melissa on the right, a near-clone of Punky Brewster — her hair in brown, almost black, tresses styled on her head (and which used to be in pigtails and fastened with a smiling yellow-sun barrette before she hit sixth grade and thought it too juvenile); freckles sprinkled over her nose; ragtag outfit made of a purple jean jacket and a rainbow of odd accessories — red and green tie-dyed T-shirt, blue Capri pants, orange socks. Amidst the scenery of gray gravel beneath our feet, the swings beneath our bottoms, and the twisted metal shapes of the monkey bars, slides and merry-go-round behind us, we are a brilliant splash of color, and I seem to be the nexus, my dark face and hair forming the stem of my cherry tomato clothing.

But the reality is different.

A week ago, the first day of sixth grade, Sarah and Melissa come up to me just before recess.

"Key-ran," Sarah says, shaking her mane to get it out of her face. "Wanna go swinging today?"

I can't believe my luck; last school year, I used to wander out to the swings all by my lonesome, bucking the Mariah Carey craze and humming Whitney Houston's classic "How Will I Know?" in my puberty-endangered soprano.

"Me?" I say, raising a hand to my chest and widening my eyes as if the girls have just pronounced me Miss America.

"Of course, silly," Melissa says. She tugs at the lapels of her jean jacket and shakes her head from side to side to flaunt her brown 'do.

The two of them lead me out to the swings. As we pass by, our classmates' mouths round into shocked O's. We walk through the gravel, kicking up stones and lifting dust into the air. It is the end of August, still summer, and you can tell that all of the kids feel oddly out of place, stunned to know that the weather can persist even if the vacation cannot. All of us have spent a morning with our summery thirst for diversion pent up, and even though we are in sixth grade now — the highest grade in this school — we cling to recess as much as we ever have, so when Sarah, Melissa, and I reach the swings, we slide into the floppy black seats with a goal to swing until our legs are blue at the knee.

"Let's see who can swing highest," Melissa says, pushing off and demonstrating exemplary technique — a smooth extension of her two gams, pressed together, as she swings forward, then a swift separation as she falls back, bending her knees so that each leg forms a V parallel to the ground. Her lips are pursed in heavy concentration at first, but as she falls into her rhythm, her face becomes supremely serene. I begin to copy, a bouquet of butterflies rising in me — a feeling I mistake at first for fear but later identify, all too sadly, as pride.

I give it everything I have. A breeze forms around me as I swing, the summer day now feeling brisk and cool. I can feel the air blowing through the fabric of my sweatpants, can hear the squeak of the swings' hinges and the breaths of exertion as Sarah and Melissa move higher, can smell faint wisps of their Petit Naté perfume. I push harder, almost coming out of my seat, and I notice that as I swing forward, the girls swing back. This gives me an overwhelming sense of victory, a bragging right of sorts. But I don't dare brag. I want to be humble to my two friends, effervescently graceful, like Whitney.

I swing higher, so out of breath it is like I am in the...